Our Journey

Monday, 26 January 2015

For those of you who’ve been following the
story of Our Rose but have not spent
time aboard, I am here as a recent stowaway to tell you that Richard and Jen
are, in spite of all the sunny prognostications on their blog and the myriad
photos of smiling happy people in exotic foreign locales, truly suffering.

How
can that be, you’re all undoubtedly asking yourselves?

All we’ve ever heard
about is how fantastically outfitted the boat is, with every possible modern
convenience, from an unlimited supply of fresh water and state of the art
navigation system, a navigation system moreover that takes the boat from point
A to point B with nary a lifting of the proverbial finger, unless, of course,
that finger is Jen’s middle one, which she uses to great affect as various
speedboats cruise by her home at full throttle tossing up a terrific wake,
entirely oblivious of her finger or their own behaviour.

And as for Richard,
well, I don’t want to alarm those of you Kiwi’s out there who were smart enough
to stay home to watch the America’s Cup on TV, but Richard doesn’t even know
what day of the week it is half the time. His days are consumed by the number
of hours he’s counting down before he needs to service his generator or replace
the fuel filter on his dinghy. Sad. All terribly sad.

Thankfully, I came aboard
just in time to alert them as to how dire things had gotten and while I was
there we did manage to get out of the “house” for a few excursions.

We saw pigs
swimming in the ocean then shortly thereafter heard the following on the radio
from Staniel Cay in the Bahamas. “Attention boaters, it has come to our
attention that some visitors are allowing our beloved pigs to swim too far from
shore. We all love our swimming pigs and while they can swim, they are not Michael Phelps. Please stay close to shore
if you go there to feed them.” This is the kind of high sea’s adventure Richard
and Jen have gotten themselves into. Ten-dollar Bahamian loaves of bread and
warnings about swimming pigs getting too much exercise. Hardly Pirates of the Caribbean,
if you get my drift.

In spite of the many onerous responsibilities that come
with a lifestyle defined by bottomless glasses of Chardonnay and lobster on the
half shell, life aboard Our Rose is
at once more thrilling and more prosaic than one might imagine.

Rising at his
leisure, i.e., sometime around dawn, Richard typically spends his mornings poring
over nautical charts before cooking breakfast, a meal that veers between
cooked apples and yoghurt or canned spaghetti over raisin-bread toast with a
spoonful of jam on top. Yes! I know it’s shocking, but a dollop of jam atop
spaghetti on top of toast is apparently a New Zealand delicacy, alongside
French fries dipped in vanilla ice-cream! or so Jen and Richard told me.

But
what the hell do I know? I’m American and I was only in New Zealand once and
all I remember was the sheep and the nuclear powered sunshine.

After a typical
New Zealand breakfast we practiced our New Zealand vocabulary. Dick=Deck.
Sex=Seven minus One. Cuds=Children. Fitter-cheney=Type of Pasta. Once I figured
out what the hell Richard and Jen were saying to me, we generally discussed
what the dinner menu might be (Fush or Chuckin) and once those life and death
issues had been attended to Richard and I set off in the dinghy in search of
lobsters. (Free food being something sailors, rich or poor, seem unable to
resist.) Jen, meanwhile, spent most of her days depleting the world’s supply of
household cleansers and scrubbing every inch of Our Rose to a state that would be the envy of any Swiss-German.
Once the boat was sanitized and the laundry had been washed and hung out to
dry, Jen set about concocting the evenings repast, a meal staggering in its ambition
and execution.

Entertaining and figuring out how much or how little to drink
is, admittedly, the focus of life aboard any sailing vessel and Our Rose is no exception.

And so, after
12 days aboard Our Rose,

I liftJen and Richard flew back to Miami on an earplane for some much
needed wrist.

Saturday, 20 December 2014

I
think the thing that has been the most mind blowing, has been the hospitality that we have received.

From
people we knew – Ashley & Graham, Michael & Rebecca, David & Diana
and Beryl

To complete strangers (some of who became friends) – a stranger who offered for
us to use her car in Maine, another stranger who drove us to a Supermarket in
Maine, Martha & Warren from Rockford who took us to their home for a meal,
The Lobster Buyer in Martinicus who “gave” us lobsters, Anne West, who drove us
around Washington DC, Steve & Wendy from Annapolis who had us to their home
for dinner at Halloween, Karl Weiss who helped us with contacts, Anna Hines who
we enjoyed NZ wines with, Susan our Angel in Disguise from Beaufort and finally
Peter & Carla, the not so mythical cousins…

Thank
you, Thank you, Thank you to each and everyone of you

for
your extraordinary hospitality…

The scenery has been amazing.Having now experienced from Miami to
Penobscot Bay (north Maine) some highlights were:

Finally we had a weather window.The afternoon before leaving we went
ashore, and unfortunately I had a fall on the dock.Richard helped me into the dinghy and back home to Our
Rose.The next morning getting up
early to leave, I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg (knee) (oh no…)

Richard helped “lift” me up to the helm seat
for my watches.We had a lovely
25+ knot following breeze leaving, which slowly dissipated during the day.

Cape Hatteras, (which can be notoriously rough)
was beautiful and calm for our night rounding.

Arriving at Beaufort Saturday afternoon,

we immediately went ashore and straight to A
& E.

X-Rays showed no breaks, however I needed to
see an Orthopedic Surgeon.

Sunday, sitting with my leg up, and we saw a
lady and her beautiful doggie come paddling to Our Rose.

Turning out to be an “Angel” in disguise, this
was when we first met Susan and “Kiwi”.She had seen our NZ flag, and “had” to come and see us.

Susan insisted on taking us to the Surgeon when
we got the appointment, then onto the MRI.Driving us to get our propane filled.

Two days later, Susan collected us again to go
back to the Surgeon – the great news was no serious damage to the knee.I could slowly start using the knee and
get rid of the crutches as soon as I could.

Susan even came and collected me and took me
get get my hair done.

She was nothing short of an Angel and a
wonderful friend to boot.

On a foggy night it was the Christmas Lighted Boat Flotilla,

Many boats with amazing Christmas lights and coupled to music...

This is Santa with his Dolphin Reindeer

From Beaufort, we had a great weather window of
sailing down to Fort Pierce, 500 (or so) nm. This was our last stop in the USA before leaving for the
Bahamas.

Friday, 21 November 2014

The
children, and parents that came knocking on the door were gorgeous,

All
dressed up… We had many Ninjas, The Simpsons, Wonder Woman,Little Policemen.

Wendy had made us Roast Lamb for
dinner, we had a great night of wonderful food, free flowing wine and great
company!

We
had spent one month in Annapolis.

Our Rose had all the jobs completed on her
that we had organized (thank you to M Yacht Services)…

We reprovisioned
to overflowing, taking the opportunity of having an address for a month and
stocked up on filters, cleaning products and anything else we had found hard to
source, then finally it was time to move on.

We
anchored at a spot at Solomons Islands.We walked to the Annie Marie Gardens and Sculture.

There
was an art exhibition on showing “edible” type art - the first two are both "knotted" fabric

This mural is made out of plastic bottles…

The
sculpture gardens were great, with lots of artistic bird houses

And
many other sculptures,

including this “miniture” park bench in a playhouse

We dropped anchorage at a beautiful spot in Irvington…

We
walked to the local vineyard and had a winetasting

While in Irvington we bought insulation to wrap around our hot water cylinder – it is
certainly cooling down!